ABOUT THIS ALBUM

This reissue of a fine compilation of original music has an underground history that not even its creators can quite grasp. Tom Vandenberg was sitting in a small saloon (The Illustrious Sand Bar, where he has actually been known to pick up straws and mop the floors) in his home town (Saugatuck, Michigan) when a stranger came in, checked out the juke box, found 'Ride With Me' and played every selection on it.

When Tom introduced himself as one of the co-progenitors of this outstanding collection, the stranger said he'd gotten a third generation copy of the CD when he was living in Nashville, that it was really 'hot' down there and a lot of people were passing it around. Tom laughed and said 'If it's so damned hot, how come I'm not rich?' The stranger immediately offered to buy him a beer. He bought him lots of beer--lots of lovely brown bottles of Bass Ale. (Bass Ale is Good. Bass Ale is Tom's friend. Bass Ale should be everybody's friend.)

Al Weener and Tom Vandenberg are longtime friends and mainstays of the Southwest Michigan musical scene and are widely known for their impressive songwriting skills, instrumental prowess, great arrangements and fine vocalizations. Both are skillful, deeply insightful and highly expressive songwriters whose gifts are only enhanced by their soulful vocalizations and inspired playing.

They are joined on this CD by several of their favorite West-Michigan musical cohorts, all of whom also have impressive musical resumes and, like Tom and Al, are pretty much obliged by the (thankfully) dying monoply of Big Business in general and the Music Business in particular to actually go out and work for a living.

They do this in all the usual guises, as painters and carpenters, electricians and plumbers, landscapers and slingers of hash. You see them in offices hunched over their keyboards and scratching their asses at the water cooler; they're the ones repairing or replacing your roof or greeting you as furniture salesmen or the guy who knows everything there is to know about the sound system you've always dreamed of.

They're the gifted souls you might pass on the expressway driving a delivery van or who stop by once a month to check the chlorine in your pool. You can find them in any number of places in any town you've ever lived in or visited, working as waiters in black ties or as waitresses with smiles that make you want to order a little piece of heaven and a glance that suggests a burger and fries is all you're going to get.

They're the sweepers of sidewalks, mowers of lawns, restaurant managers, bartenders and the cabbie who always manages to deliver you to your door when you're too drunk to tell him where it actually is.

More than anything, they're people just like you who, when all of their particular realities get to go home on Friday night are able to shed their skins and become the Weekend High Priests of anything in B flat.

They're the ones who have somehow figured out what it is they have to do to keep The World As We Know It rotating in the Eternal Groove and somehow maintain a personal world and a family within that world without sacrificing their artistic vision or the deep and enduring purpose of what all true artists constantly try to define and redefine: what it means to live. These are good people, this is great stuff.

"Ride With Me" presents an eclectic range of songforms and it's evident from the very first track that these two singular writers have a thorough and inspired grasp of all of them.

"Ride With Me" is indeed a most pleasurable ride, an adventure that leads not only to great destinations but is a great introduction to the vast range of talents of these very gifted musicians.

last summer i was hitch hiking through alaska, and the man that picked me up just outside of juno, i swear to God, was playing "ride with me" on his car stereo. the music was inceltable!! i was especially impressed with the guitar player- made me wonder about his hair-angular perhaps?or, long and fogging? great stuff!!! the singer had a unique quillity to his voice-kind of a whooshing/pumping thing reminiscent of the vocals on ixlanpontheldizons' "bornog 5 rescue dogs_ - or at least very close- excellent!! very tight production values in the vein of "headless sisters" first release--" i just stumble now"--all kidding aside, this is some great music-- great writing, great playing / vocals, by folks that will certainly be legendary in the not so distant future.be the first on the block to download the whole album and be able to say--"i knew of them way back when!!!"